1. Get rid of the corporate form (and limited liability) except in those instances specifically authorized by the General Assembly (PA’s State Legislature).

2. Permit anyone with a bachelor’s degree in the field, after a one year paid apprenticeship in the grade range, to teach in their subject area of expertise.

3. Do away with the requirements of a law degree for lawyers and instead require 5 years apprenticeship and passage of the Pennsylvania Bar exam upon affirmation by the master lawyer that the apprentice is qualified to practice and that the lawyer will employ the apprentice for at least one year.

4. Do away with the state Income tax.

5. Make gambling illegal. Do away with the PA state lottery.

6. Change election of State Senators and State Representatives. Elect two Senators per county, but increase the number permitted in the State House of Representatives.

7. Reduce statewide speed limits to 25 MPH on town roads and 40 MPH on country roads and highways.

8. Re-institute statewide sovereign immunity.

9. Transfer rights to non-renewable resources to each county. Establish elected office of a Conservatorship Committee in each county that would be tasked with proper conservation of non-renewable resources as well as allocation of profits gained in each county if such resources are to be sold.

10. Establish state subsidized liability insurance for doctors.

11. Restrict who can contribute to a political campaign to: 1. The candidate’s own funds or 2. Citizens who’s domicile is within the political boundaries of the office which is sought after.

Really, the “front porch” ought to appeal to urban neighborhoods just as much as it does to the rural.

#1 – basically nationalizes governors. You’d have a bunch of governors playing national politics instead of focusing on their states. Oh boy!

#2 – again, you’d turn the Supreme Court into an even more politicized entity than it already is. Not good.

#3 – don’t we already have pay-go? Besides, they’d find ways around this no matter what we do.

#4 – that strikes me as just a tiny bit extreme, and a huge abuse loophole for all sorts of things.

#5 – I’m sorry, but the progressive tax makes a good deal more sense than a flat tax, which is really just a huge hand-out to the wealthiest Americans. I say keep progressive income taxes and lower taxes on businesses. Encourage business growth and tax the wealthy properly. They can afford it, especially if they can still run effective businesses.

#6 – I’m still working this one out. But I don’t see it as changing anything. Honestly, every attempt to regulate campaign contributions has backfired. Why wouldn’t this one?

#7 – I think we should have the right to vote people into office as many times as we damn well please.

#8 – On first blush this makes sense, but then when you actually think about it you start to see the problems with it. This would require all legislation to be very short – which would mean lots and lots of things would be left out, which would mean that bureaucrats down the line would end up writing the vast bulk of our legislation. Better to have the legislators do that, even if it means they only read summaries their staff prepares for them.

And are you serious about ending national banking? Really? Do you even have an inkling about what this would mean for investment in the poorer regions and less populated states? I’m fine with putting an end to the investment/commercial marriage of banks, but let them compete nationally. Otherwise you’re asking for monopoly and a much more difficult time for small businesses and poor people to get any sort of financial assistance.

I like the declare war bit though.

A good idea I heard at the League recently – floated by mark thompson – was to defuse the power of the Presidency by holding national elections for the Speaker of the House. That’s a quality idea. Also – more seats in the house!

Ironically, a loophole in Fed Regs allows us menaces to society to process chickens on the property and sell directly to the consumer… oh the horror.

I know where you are coming from with regards #4, but I don’t think you have your formulation quite right.

Perhaps: All necessary regulation must be outcome based and not process based.

That is, one can only regulate the desired results and the penalties for non-compliance. How a company gets there is their own special genius.

When the regulations for processing animals (a basic human necessity) start with rules on the proper paving of the parking lot, you realize this is a naked barrier to entry masquerading as a public safety issue.

Quit stealing my ideas, wouldya.

These are obviously obnoxious examples. But I think there are clearly some federal laws that make sense.

Expand the Peoples House by doubling or tripling the number of seats. Districts to be drawn will be drawn by only geographic considerations and not by proportional population.

Benefits:

-Makes it more difficult for lobbyists to control legislation.
-Gives representation to specific Place and avoids the nonsense of gerrymandering
-Allows for more Citizen Legislators and makes it more difficult for the Party elites to control who will run.
-Makes it more difficult to reach a majority vote on specific legislation and thus slowing the growth of government.

Also, what do you think of the idea that there’s an insufficient number of Americans who have a clue what ‘republicanism’ might possibly mean, ergo, turn out the lights the party’s over! Or, maybe we don’t need all that many Americans who have some knowledge of the principles of the first secessionists rebellion if the focus of said upheaval is defined as the Kansan DA indicated! So preach, bro, I’m looking forward to it!

If need be, simply state, whilst wheezily gritting your tooth:
“A good idea to abolish the income tax Mr. Medaille, you commie pinko cur dog”.
He might reply;
“You’re welcome you pond scum rabid dixiecentric revanching methane breathing bacteria.”

pb’s notion of a Draft would certainly not go unnoticed.

I am attempting to avert my eyes from the current farrago Robert, in self defense like when you look away as a locomotive plunges off a span 90 feet in the air, trailing about 35 cars after it in a nice arc of destruction. I think Caleb is correct, we need to concentrate more upon the States and inform the Feds , in no uncertain terms that they have exceeded, by an order of magnitude, their usefulness.

As to Eric’s remarks on virtue and trees gone bad, one of the best ways to refresh an old decrepit apple is to prune the everlasting daylights out of it ..open it to the air and sunlight and remove ALL SUCKERS. It generally does not bear well for a few seasons afterwards but it will survive to bear well with the patient application of some sharpened LOPPERS. One is advised to ruthlessly remove all those aspens clogging it too, the interlocking ones Scooter wrote a poetic letter about to Judith Miller whilst she was in the hoosegow for undocumented stenography.

As to expanding the Supreme Court with an appointee from each State…me thinks not, more appointees equal more mischief and more politics and even more flights of fanciful legislating from the Federal bench

It reminds me of the time i was thinking absent-mindedly about how to deal with the entrenched lobbyists and I hit upon the idea of some public financed representatives to balance out the influence of the lobbies only to recall that we already have them and they are called the U.S. Congress. It is a shame we have to think up hybridized additions to government in order to make it palatable to the flummoxed public…..as opposed to taking a chainsaw to the place…and perhaps a nice brisk backfire to consume the accumulated debris , depriving the potential fuel from an over-weaning Federal Government .

It seems that FPR is concerned with how corporations treat people like machines and have no local accountability. (Perhaps I’m putting words in FPR’s mouth, and I’m probably guilty of endowing it with personhood.) In any case, if corporate personhood, or its elimination, effectively addresses these issues, could someone please spell it out a little bit?

Questionable. It may lead to a president losing an election over an unpopular war, but I don’t see how it would prevent him from starting one, if he really wanted to do so.

Have we moved beyond the platitudinous community hug?

To paraphrase Hillary, it takes a smart aleck.

I’m in favor of a draft for all major military actions! But of course, that means that we won’t be the police force of the world anymore, and the war on terrorism would be kaput.

A draft would be a VERY bad thing for me personally, but it would be a VERY effective means to curtail use of our military for foreign adventures. (Kosovo, Afganistan, Somalia, take your pick)

If the American people won’t stand for a draft, they should not be fighting the war in the first place. It leaves the “just war” argument up to the people fighting it… the lowest/broadest level of government.

I like the draft, and for very Front Porch reasons!

If we care about long-term progress toward FPR objectives, including the kinds of objectives discussed in this essay, we ought to be talking about how to promote virtue in the people, not how to improve our form of government. Apart from fundamental changes in the people (e.g. whether they depend more on community structures for their material needs or on social security checks or on multinational corporations — whether their overriding motivations are greed, laziness, and vanity or fear of God, etc., etc.), any otherwise worthy improvements in the form of government are either politically infeasible or doomed to disappear shortly after passing or doomed to being corrupted into worthlessness. The Constitution already has lots of checks and balances to protect us, but “living Constitution” interpretations have rendered them dead. Our form of government is bound to be a product of our foundations. Trying to make a bad tree produce good fruit is pretty futile.